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Avaneya

05-13-2010, 08:48 AM

The year is 2082 AD and the struggle for social justice and human rights has inevitably followed early settlers into their first Martian city-state republics.

Corporate controlled media, fractional reserve central banks, false flags, over industrialization, and a delicate supply of natural capital will challenge you as governor in a new world which is hostile and intolerant of mistakes.

A project that's still a little way off, but pimping it nonetheless. It's an ambitious RTS that:

Will combine elements of a science fiction real time strategy, adventure, and some of those of the classical city building and management genre. The setting is on the Martian surface.

[...]

In other games, it may be possible (even encouraged) to bulldoze large amounts of natural capital to accomodate the expansion of a city. Through the perspective of GDP, strictly an income sheet, this may appear beneficial to your society.

Viewed through the perspective of the GPI as a net balance sheet, however, one is left with a different impression of very costly ramifications. Bulldozing your natural capital would have deferred greater costs than those immediately amassed by mortgaging them into the future.

Avaneya's code will be released under the GNU General Public License v3. Thus, users are free to run, study, redistribute, and modify it at their leisure. A single player / campaign mode will be available at no cost. Our multiplayer gaming service will require a monthly subscription fee. This allows us to cover the cost of the servers as well as continue to fund development. This model follows that of software as a service, rather than as a product.

Some who prefer not to challenge the status quo, argue that commercial free software, especially with respect to games, is not sustainable. One of the goals of the Avaneya project is to prove otherwise and we are hell bent on doing this.

Lots of information, so to filter it down to make it easier to digest, I've cut a lot out to keep it relevent for pure gamers. I highly recommend reading the full email, as it contains all sorts of other details, technical and otherwise. Here it is:

----
### A brief foreword

It's been quiet, no doubt. But in reality, behind the scenes, it's been as quiet as the Western Front. Deep down in their workshops, the Hobbits have been busy. A lot has happened since the project first established an online presence. Let's look at some of these things.

### What is Avaneya?

It started, as many things have, out of a sense of frustration at the lack of quality entertainment for free platforms, such as GNU. Many of us have been there at some point in time in our lives where we have gone into a local computer shop or elsewhere, only to feel a little like second class citizens because we valued our freedom. There is no reason why users of proprietary software should be entitled to special treatment in a society that values equality and freedom.

But the free software community is more than just a cosmetic variant or different shade of software, with respect to the alternatives. The computing machine itself makes no distinction between the social values its operators apply to the behavioural patterns we give it (software). There is a distinction and it is in the people that use the software because they value freedom, whereas users of proprietary software do not.

The world has changed significantly in the last several decades. The ability to communicate one-to-many is far more accessible now than it once was. But we mustn't become too lost in the world of technology and, every now and then, we need to pull ourselves out of the system and perform a reality check. We need to realize that, despite all of these sights and sounds, most of the world has still not even used a telephone.

The free software community, in my experience, tend to be characterized by a social conscience. They tend to be more aware of the larger picture. For example, we value powerful and reliable software, but we know that if it is at the cost of our freedom, then we would not permit superficial values to get the better of our reason. In other words, if we were to remove computing from the picture, the free software community would still be different from proprietary users.

We value our freedom. We would like to improve the condition of our world. We would like to learn. We also would also like to be entertained, and it may be possible to do all of these things together.

It was for this reason that a game that resonates with the values of the free software community would inevitably transcend more than simply the legal terms under which it was licensed, but also be qualitatively different from mainstream proprietary gaming in theme. And so a seed was born - Avaneya, a cerebral science fiction game for the free software community. Synopsis:

Earth is a write off. The year is 2082 AD and the struggle for social justice and human rights has inevitably followed early settlers into their first Martian city-state republics.

Broken neoclassical economics, corporate controlled media, fractional reserve central banks, false flags, over industrialization, and a delicate supply of natural capital will challenge you as governor in a new world which is hostile and intolerant of mistakes.

[...]

### What's next?

We're going to look through the technical blueprints, discuss, revise, and continue to have the engineers implement them. The artists will carry on with their work as well. The hardest part was the engine design. The better one plans, the easier and less time it takes to follow through with the implementation

### Mailing lists and chat rooms

We have two public mailing lists, this and one other. This one is unidirectional and just for news worthy announcements. The latter is open to everyone and available for public Avaneya related discussion, such as the blueprints.

We also have a new IRC chat room, #avaneya, on the Freenode network (irc.freenode.net). Everyone is welcome and you are encouraged to come and join us in the discussion.

Launchpad is an online service that allows for coordinated software project collaboration. It provides services for source control management, blueprints, support, bug tracking, and more. The Avaneya project, the people behind it, and the source code as it develops can be found there.

Some of the musical talent we've managed to attract include Izmar Verhage, Djplaeskool, Rafiralfiro, Rone, Shawan Rising, and Von Magnet to name a few. Some of them are comfortable with our using already released tunes, while others are making new ones for the game.

The game's music can be divided into two categories, ambient and soundtrack. Ambient music is what you would hear during gameplay. Soundtrack music is what you would hear during cinematics, and possibly other places. This latter category we are going to try and release on redbook (CD audio) and other formats. The profits from that will go entirely to the musicians, as it rightly should.

There will be a lot more to share with you on music in the future, as I am still figuring out what's best musically for the project since it can be a challenge when you have a rich storyline.

[?]

Distribution of Avaneya using the package manager helps solve all of these problems. But since game data is large and in many parts of the world broadband is still not always viable, people should have the option to order branded Avaneya pre-loaded USB sticks. This Avaneya bling, unlike archaic stamped compact discs, can be re-used for whatever the user would like. In fact, preloading them with a free operating system is also an option.